Students across the Junior School and Senior School have had opportunities to visit art galleries and museums, enriching their understanding of artists and artworks. They gain an understanding about the importance of art enriching the culture of society by visiting different exhibition spaces.

Most recently, the Year 7 cohort visited the National Gallery of Victoria Australia and the National Gallery of Victoria International. As preparation for their trip to Central Australia in Year 8, the students learnt from an education officer about traditional and contemporary Indigenous art. They learnt and investigated how these artists draw Dreamtime stories or events in history that have had an impact on the First Nations peoples. This background understanding will assist the students when they visit different communities and participate in art workshops while on the trip.

As preparation for their trip to Central Australia in Year 8, the Year 7 cohort learnt about traditional and contemporary Indigenous art.

Students in Years 7 and 8 recently visited the KAWS exhibition at the National Gallery of Victoria, learning about contemporary art practice, in particular appropriation. They enjoyed the colourful, comical artworks with easily recognisable subject matter, drawn from the media and cartoons. Students explored our State collection and other temporary exhibitions, exposing them to a wide range of art periods and ideas.

These opportunities to visit galleries is vital for students to learn from seeing and looking closely at artworks, not from reproductions. We tried to ensure they slowed down, not rushing past an artwork, as they would when using social media. Slow looking is a skill we are trying to instil in the students, taking time to consider and contemplate what they are looking at, learning to form opinions, but supporting their analysis with evidence from artworks. An example was when we were looking at how KAWS applied paint in comparison to the Monet. Being able to get close to the work and see the textual qualities of Monet, each brush mark, unlike KAWS, whose application of paint is so smooth you find it hard to imagine it was painted.

The Year 7 cohort visited the KAWS exhibition at the National Gallery of Victoria.

Senior students also visited the National Gallery of Victoria in preparation for their studies in 2020. Media students explored the photographic exhibition, ‘Civilization: The Way We Live Now’, developing an understanding about how photography can create a narrative, record historical events, and question society and how we live. They also visited exhibitions by two female Australian photographers, which provided excellent research for the development of their own art ideas and study of Media.

It was interesting to hear that for some students this was the first time they had visited the National Gallery of Victoria. It demonstrates to us that these types of excursions are a vital part of our students’ education, teaching them about these important cultural institutions and how to access them, now and into the future.